War of the Worlds ★★★★★

This is one of the worst things that I’ve ever seen. Complete undiluted dogshit from start to finish. I remember being a bit disappointed that Deadware didn’t stick more fully to its similar presentation gimmick – to simply give us an “unedited” view of the protagonists’ desktop rather than move around, cutting to closeups of points of interest. Early on I felt the same about Amazon’s¹ War of the World’s, but the editing is so maximalist and jarring, nyooming in on every little popup notification, every mouse click, that it becomes a core part of the charm. This is a movie about, if nothing else, being trapped in a desk job where everyone is demanding your attention at all times when you just want to doss and stalk people on social media, but edited with the frenetic energy of a Michael Bay movie. If you do not already hate Microsoft Teams ringtone notification sounds already you will by the end of the film. You are constantly being assaulted by sounds. I am pretty sure that I heard the Half-Life 2 Combine attack helicopter machinegun noise at one point. Truly a movie about being on the computer.

I don’t even know how to describe the plot. It is both incomprehensibly evil and also simply incomprehensible. A tragic low point for our hero Ice Cube (apparently the single person in charge of operating the entire U.S. D.H.S. panopticon) is the Martians drinking his dead wife’s Facebook profile. This harrowing moment results in one of the dozen times Ice Cube removes his glasses in shock throughout the course of this film, a real spectacle spectacle. Everything about this film feels like a parody of itself.